


So Be It, I'm Your Crowbar

by Xekstrin



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-02-04 08:37:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18600952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xekstrin/pseuds/Xekstrin
Summary: Sombra looks into the eyes of a murderous weapon and she realizes that behind layers of conditioning and torture, there is a real person underneath.She has to get her out.She has to save her.





	So Be It, I'm Your Crowbar

_Do you want to take her for a walk?_

The first message was everything and nothing. 

Sombra spent a lot of time turning ideas over in her head. They were always turning in loops and cycles, no matter what else occupied her time. Three projects at once; three moral systems she tried to ascribe herself to while wrangling through the contradictions. It all moved lightning-quick, and on the outside it appeared capricious and impulsive, but it wasn't her fault others were slow on the uptake.

Sometimes she stopped to take herself apart, just to be sure her internal logic was consistent.

Infiltrate the Widowmaker project. Because it was a secret. Everything in the domain of shadows was a prerogative to understand. Dangerous secrets needed to be brought to light.

The Widowmaker was an ally and Sombra needed to understand the people around her, in order to prepare for any inevitabilities like betrayal, backstabbing, outliving her usefulness. Sombra knew the weapon at her back had standing orders to snap her neck if she stepped out of line. It was a ticking time bomb. 

The Widowmaker was an asset and Sombra needed to understand the tech behind it. If the conditioning wore off, she was left with a killing machine that didn't know fear or pity and was no longer under anyone's control. Well, ignoring that was just plain irresponsible. Sure she could take Gabe's word for it ("We have her under control.") but she had never gotten anywhere by believing what the people in charge had to say.

She worked on it in her spare time. It was a side hustle. Sombra casually cleaned house, sweeping aside firewalls in her pajamas and opening the blinds and windows to illuminate the darkness. Nothing killed filth like sunlight, or that's what las monjitas always said anyway as they raised her and tried to make her into something that would benefit society. Her and all the little girls and boys who were left like tremors after an earthquake.  

Structurally unsound. 

Eventually she found a pattern in the numbers. They didn't belong, yet followed their own logic. Curious and idle, she dug deeper, linking it to dates and times and realizing that each one was an attempted breach. Over months. Over years.

The Widowmaker was trying to break free.

_There's a woman in there._

It hit her hard enough to leave her feeling rattled again, the earthquakes again.

She had no obligation to save the world. There were hundreds of people who starved to death every day no matter what she did. There were still little boarding schools run by little monjitas full of children who became little gangsters and lived their petty little lives, dying and fighting over scraps. The oceans were rising and swallowing the coast and destroying homes. 

There were people killing their spouses in their bed.

Thinking about it all put her under the ground and her heart was too calcified to ache anymore. 

If she did anything to compromise a powerful Talon asset, that asset would act in self-defense and destroy her without mercy.

But the records showed otherwise.

So she sent her a message.

_Do you want to take her for a walk?_

 

* * *

 

 

As the years went by Sombra thought that Amélie Lacroix might be the greatest double agent in all of history. Unfortunately, due to the nature of spies, the best ones were never discovered at all, and were lost to time. 

She watched Amélie go through the motions and follow her programming to the letter. The weapon did not sleep. Those hours spent in darkness, staring off at nothing when there was no mission to fulfill, would have driven Sombra mad. Torture she could withstand; monotony was worse than hell, a terror beyond imagining. She offered Amélie a burner phone once, to have something to kill time with. 

Amélie met her with an unblinking stare. "I don't need it."

Gold eyes bore right into her, drilling deep to the core until they found something vulnerable and it started to shake. 

_There's a woman in there._

Ignorance was bliss, because the knowing killed her. _She's trying to get out,_ Sombra thought, the reality of it knocking her footing loose. The Widowmaker project shuffled from side hustle to full time goal. She needed to free her. _There's a woman in there and she's trying to get out, I have to let her out._

"That woman is dead," Amélie told her, when Sombra managed to find a way to put the thoughts to words. "Even if you free me. You know that, right?"

That sounded stupid to her until she had a few more cycles to loop it through. But after a while it made sense. Put a woman in a box. Kill everything she loves. Break her body into little pieces. What even remained, after that?

Widowmaker idled in her bedroom, because Sombra fudged some records of where the weapon should be stored, and why, and when. So there was a moment of reprieve for both of them, but Sombra wondered if she wasn't hurting her in the long run by giving her these small bouts of mercy. Amélie spent years hardening herself to this, maintaining the ruse of a perfectly conditioned soldier. 

If Sombra was soft with her, and the callous faded, would Amélie bleed the next time something struck her?

"Is there anything you look forward to?" Sombra asked, out of curiosity. It was a deeply personal question, but she'd been elbow-deep inside of Amélie's chest at this point. They were intimate. She'd touched Amélie's heart to get at the wiring within that partially-human body, refitted to be a tool for Talon to use. Sombra was inside of her for at least an hour, and she only felt that heart beat once. "You know when I was in the joint, all I could think about was eating fresh pineapple on the beach. I obsessed over it. Look."

Sombra lifted her shirt a little and displayed a faded yellow pineapple tattoo on her ribcage. She loved her tattoos but especially the dumb ones, like the pineapple, and the skin-deep integration of nanotech to make a disappearing tattoo on her inner thigh. The words read, "Come closer", and when close enough, shifted to, "Made you look ;)".

"I am going to find everyone who did this to me," Amélie said, completely dispassionate, and that made the words somehow even more terrifying, "And I am going to blind them, and bury them, and torture them until they break. And if after ten years they are still alive, maybe I will allow them to kill themselves."

"...Noted," Sombra said. 

She wondered if Amélie's enhanced traits meant she heard how Sombra's heart thundered with fear. Even then there was the chance that her attempts would fail and Amélie's conditioning would kick in and she would kill Sombra for what she was doing. On the most basic level, Sombra was attempting to steal valuable Talon technology. Not something easily forgiven.

She'd never felt Amélie inhale. Not even when they were pressed closed together, working on a mission for the boss. Amélie would wrap an arm around her waist and grapple them to a better vantage point, or Sombra would toss a translocator and drag Amélie along by the hand. She'd hold her tight and press her face to Amélie's chest and wait for a heartbeat that never came.

"Was it good?" Amélie asked, after a moment.

"Hmmm?" Sombra looked up from her tablet. 

"The pineapple."

"Yeah," Sombra said. "It was like fucking God."

Amélie thought that was funny. "You believe in God?"

"Why wouldn't I? I was raised by nuns." She stretched her arms out, realizing she'd been typing from an odd angle for hours now, and there was only so much her augmentation could help with. She was part machine too, of course, just not as extreme as Amélie. "A big angry man ruining life for everyone else, and we're expected to smile and say thank you and love him unconditionally, and if we don't he'll beat us and torment us for the insult? Makes sense to me."

"I don't think we ascribe to the same brand of Catholicism," Amélie said.

"I think we do. Anyway, _she's_ all saintly and free from sin so that I don't gotta be." Sombra rolled up her sleeve, displaying la virgen on her bicep. The saintly aura, the beatific expression. Even now, some days, when she was scared a little voice in the back of her head repeated the Ave María. It was the only one she could remember after years of repetition, rosary after rosary slipping through her fingers. Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres.

Whenever Amélie walked, it looked like a predator stalking. The sloping, shifting muscles of a giant cat, the way the shoulders rolled with every step, heavy with intent. The prayer flashed through her mind again as Amélie approached, and reached out— Sombra fought hard not to flinch out of her range—  

— and touched her tattoo.

Amélie traced the lines, up her arms. Skirting over fabric to brush against the smoke rising on the column of her neck. She tugged the collar of Sombra's shirt down a little to see the rest: a cartoon mouse smoking a cigarette. 

"I miss smoking," she said, allowing a pure note of longing to enter her voice. 

"Amor, you don't have to wait to be free in order to enjoy a smoke or two."

Amélie told her what brand she liked, and Sombra made sure to grab a few packs to bring back to base.

The next job kept her away for a few months, but work didn't stop. She spent nights awake, staring up at the tablet held over her head and snacking on something mindless as she scrolled through miles of code.

When Amélie got the tattoo over her forearm Sombra nearly had a panic attack. What would it look like, she wondered, if the Widowmaker started acting out in small rebellions and exercising autonomy, coincidentally after a master hacker joined their ranks? But Amélie soothed her, turning around and peeling off her bodysuit to expose the ink on her back. 

"I've already done it once," Amélie said, "Years ago. They said little breaches like this were uncommon but not unexpected, and to not quash them too hard or else I risked completely shutting down."

"Oh." Sombra settled back on her bed, trying hard to soothe her racing mind as Amélie started rifling through Sombra's things. She found the pack of cigarettes and pulled it open, tapping the cigarette against the back of her palm. 

Sombra had never seen her use her hands for anything that wasn't work. Not to eat or stretch or wave or anything. She didn't realize how much it added to Amélie's eerie inhuman nature until she suddenly was confronted with those normal, innocuous movements. Miniscule. Thumb flicking over the lighter. Tapping out the ashes. 

"Don't scare me like that again," Sombra complained. "I can't have you undo all my hard work over some fucking ink."

"Well. I wouldn't want to throw a wrench into your schemes." Achingly dry with every comment, Widowmaker inhaled even though she didn't need to, and didn't get any buzz out of caffeine or alcohol or nicotine. "Whatever you have planned for me after this must be worth it."

"I'm planning on tossing you somewhere safe and maybe wiping your memories," Sombra said. "What use would I have for a broken gun?"

The weapon's lips pursed around the cigarette, stare unbroken. Her lovely sharp cheeks hollowed out for a second. When she spoke she was wreathed in clouds, smoke billowing from her lungs and nose. "You always have an angle. Just like with Volskaya."

Another cold realization. How long had Amélie held onto that knowledge? But Sombra didn't do anything but smile. "You got me. When I'm done with you I'm selling you to the highest bidder."

"Figures," Amélie said.

Sombra's brow creased a little. "You know I'm kidding, right? No need to get mad."

"I'm not mad." Amélie inhaled again, and it looked just as alien as ever. "I don't feel things like that."

"Really?" Sombra wondered, "Or is that just what you say to keep up the mask?"

"I don't feel anything," Amélie confirmed.

"Hmmm. This does ruin your _find and torture everyone_ plan. That doesn't make you mad, either?"

Amélie lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "I'm not too attached to it."

In full debugging mode, Sombra followed her instincts and kept prodding, trying to find a different angle. Maybe they could find another avenue to chip away at Amélie's conditioning, unlock another part of her mind from its prison. "Are you grateful? Are you happy I'm doing this? Or is it more like a business transaction? What do you think I want for your freedom?"

She'd gotten into the habit of relaxing around the Widowmaker, aware of the risks of keeping a weapon in her room. They had a well-established personal bubble. But she never stopped tensing up when Amélie moved close enough to touch, and every inch of her started screaming when one strong hand gripped her by the back of her skull. 

"Do you want me to be grateful?" the Widowmaker said.

Sombra's jaw started aching until she realized she was clenching her teeth. Forcing herself to relax, she looked up into eyes flat and reflective as polished gold. No feeling, just metal. The cigarette smoke drifted up lazily, circling them both. It smelled sweet and heavy, sinking to the bottom of her lungs when she breathed in deep. The hand on her head was gentle but firm, fingers slipping through the band keeping her hair up and loosening it, combing through the purple lengths. 

Amélie stroked over the fresh buzz of her undercut, nail digging along the border of her implants. Metal on metal. She was cold to the touch, and Sombra had handled enough corpses to know the feel of a bloodless limb. 

"What are you doing?" she asked, and Amélie stopped, sharp as squealing tires breaking on the asphalt. 

Amélie didn't respond. But for an instant, Sombra felt the faint bump of her pulse. In the span of time it took for Amélie's heart to finally beat, Sombra saw something that looked like a plea for mercy wavering in her eyes, panicked and desperate.

_There's a woman in there._

She hugged her tight, brow to the center of Amélie's chest. She held her and waited for her to breathe, for her heart to beat again. Instead she heard nothing, a hollow vessel scraped out by the people she was using to further her own goals.

The hand passed over her head again, more insistent. Amélie touched her, waited, then did it again. It felt hungry when she did it, rubbing the back of her knuckles over Sombra's cheeks, exploring the notches on her eyebrow with the flat of her thumb. Cold hands gripped her ears, flicked against her piercings. 

No one had ever touched Sombra like this before. She didn't know if she should tell her to stop. The choice was agony, because giving Amélie orders felt despicable, and accepting this attention felt like a reward for something that was just common decency. Sombra had a long-standing tradition of not doing any work for free, of course, but this was _different_.

"I'm so tired," Amélie finally said, the words croaking and rusted with unpracticed emotion.

A touch ghosted over her throat, and Sombra swallowed reflexively. Faint glowing heat edged close to one of her tattoos— the cigarette.

"I want to help," she offered, afraid that she couldn't.

Amélie bent down, and kissed her. Impulsively she groaned, mouth wide open to accept another kiss, and Sombra leaned back as Amélie pushed her down with another kiss, and then another, and then Amélie crushed the cigarette down onto her bedsheets, dangerously close to her face. Sombra flinched and she saw a rapid flickering in Amélie's eyes, emotions cycling like a deck of cards to land on excitement. 

 _What is it like,_ she wondered, _to be so thoroughly changed that you could only feel joy at another person's fear, or pain?_

Amélie's clothes were built for function and stripped easily. Sombra didn't get a chance to look at her, but what she saw was built like a bird. Fragile bones straining against bloodless skin, small, high breasts. Thick black hair between her thighs, untouched but somehow delicate, hiding a secret that needed to be carefully handled. 

Mostly she let Amélie touch her, and she was examined and scoured from head to toe, with Amélie returning to the spots that pleased her most. She twisted the bars piercing Sombra's nipples, murmuring in approval, and straddled her thigh. Slowly, she ground against it, building friction. Harder when she made Sombra wince, though she rarely did anything that actually hurt.

It was all about the illusion of pain, and Sombra wondered if Amélie was practiced at fooling herself into feeling joy, into feeling anything at all. 

There was sunshine inked into her skin. Candy skulls and love notes and graffiti. Amélie drank it all in, smiling at the tattoos around her ribs, the metal dangling from her belly piercing. Her hand slipped between Sombra's lips once, coming back slick. Then she kept moving down, bending her knee as it to test it, pushing Sombra's legs up and back to kiss over her calf. 

She pressed a thumb into the instep of her foot, making Sombra twitch and giggle. And Amélie smiled at the reaction, as surely as she fell into deep lust with every time she accidentally pulled too hard or pushed too far and hurt her for real.

Amélie returned to the top of her head, kissing Sombra over her eyelids.

"Keep them closed."

A hand settled over her throat, and she twitched but didn't fight it. Instead she gasped and moaned, Amélie's other hand working her steadily between her legs. Returning the favor, she wondered if Amélie would get anything out of being touched, and a zing of pleasure rolled up her spine to feel her wet and slick too. 

It was already unwinding inside of her. She had been so tense for so long, tenser by the presence of the weapon in her room, and she had been so afraid and so upset, and this was such a relief in every respect. All of her stressors were replaced by just this, and she stiffened up and cried out when Amélie pumped two fingers into her, thumb massaging her clit in a steady, demanding pace. She moaned again brokenly, a little in dismay at how quickly she was coming.

"Yes," Amélie said, sounding breathless as she felt Sombra start to twist, clenching around the fingers inside of her. "Yes, yes. I want to hear you."

She felt like she was crashing against something implacable, breaking on Amélie's hard body over and over again. Amélie pushed her to the point of overstimulation, until she was screaming from the insistent pace Amélie set.

"Stop," she gasped out, "Please stop."

Amélie did, removing her hand quickly and freezing, a prey response. But Sombra just needed to catch her breath, murmuring a reassurance and pulling Amélie to lie down beside her. 

"Just gimme a second," she said. "Need to breathe."

Amélie was quiet. Amélie was always quiet. But she watched Sombra intently, studying her and waiting for what might happen next. Curious, Sombra took the time to properly look at her. Long black hair flowed down her back, soft as silk. Sombra had wanted to touch it for so long. She'd always loved women with long hair. 

Sombra was patient when she had to be. Being patient with this was not an option, though, not when she'd been trying to hard for so long to treat Amélie like a problem to solve and not a person who desperately needed a scrap of dignity, a touch of humanity, a gentle word, a soft caress. She felt guilty. 

Stretched out together, she crooned in sympathy for how hard Amélie's clit was. So much pressure and no relief. It must have been unbearable. Fortunately there wasn't much emotion needed here, just friction, and the pleasure of her mouth. She breathed in deep, coating her tongue in thick arousal. Soft thighs locked around her head, and briefly she realized the Widowmaker could kill her like this, too. 

 _Honestly if I have to die, I'd love to go out eating pussy,_ she thought, and relaxed into the affection of Amélie's hands on her head, petting her hair.

And like this, she could feel Amélie breathe. Whether through necessity or some old muscle memory that conditioning couldn't wipe away, she didn't know. But Amélie was gasping, sharp and short, making little delighted noises and tugging harder at her hair. 

She came with a sharp cry, hips twitching up. Sombra kept her going with the tip of her tongue, alternating between flicks and gentle circling until her face was drenched with Amélie's arousal. 

Resting her face against her inner thigh, Sombra enjoyed the afterglow for as long as she could before doubt started to set in. Sombra had a thought that she rarely entertained, because in her profession, it was the kind of thought that killed you:

_Did I just do something really bad?_

Until that strong hand gripped her again, pulling her back for more. Surprised, Sombra placed a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss to Amélie's cunt, easily thrust two fingers inside of her. She was still wet and clenching from the aftershocks. She pushed herself until her jaw started hurting again. This time she ignored it, though she did whine and let Amélie know.

"Good," Amélie said, under her breath, shaking with need.

Sombra stopped just to yank a pillow underneath Amélie's hips, arching her a bit to make the job easier. Amélie lay back and relaxed and accepted it, allowed herself to be positioned however Sombra needed. She was accustomed to that, after all.

This time Amélie was much more quiet. 

(She was always quiet.)

But she finished, twisting and moaning and looking alive. Her body temperature had melded with Sombra's, pressed together long enough and convection took care of the rest. Tepid, not cold. She threw her arm over her face, the ink and irritated skin still fresh, and she _laughed_.

The sound rocked Sombra like an earthquake. 

And she realized she would do anything, anything at all, to hear it again.

The spider web stretched from elbow to wrist. Sombra traced it with a careful hand, wondering. Amélie did not offer an explanation for the spider web. Did she feel like the hunter or the prey? Was she trapped, or was she lying in wait? Sombra supposed it was all true and not true, and then again, it might have just been that Amélie really liked spiders. And then they needed to part ways, because there was only so long she could excuse having the weapon away from where someone might need it. 

No words exchanged, but Sombra lay there staring at the shadows in the corner of her room, listening to her computer towers hum, and she remained with nothing but her own thoughts.

A few days later she returned with another tattoo. 

Another _dumb_ tattoo. 

"Cheeky," Amélie said, and her fingers dug into the irritated flesh until Sombra hissed and swatted her away.

A hyper-realistic fly was perched on top of her buttocks, right where it met her lower back. 

"If I did not know better I'd say this is a proposition," Amélie said. 

And if Sombra did not know better, she'd swear the woman sounded amused.

A mouth consumed her, a kiss calculated and precise and hungry.

[Amélie swallowed her whole.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxMUzv5erBc) 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> for my friend, sailorscooby
> 
> Special thanks to Corgoptimism here on AO3 for the vanishing tattoo idea! It was wonderfully cheeky and fit Sombra perfectly.


End file.
